Lifting Anchor:
The Last Chronicle
Of Dan Rather

By

Daniel Henninger

Updated March 18, 2005 11:59 p.m. ET

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)

Dan Rather deserves more than a kick in the pants on his way out the door to a fly-fishing stream in West Texas. With Tom Brokaw's retirement just ahead of Rather's, this is the official end of an era, not just in television but in the cultural life of the nation. There was a time when what happened in the United States got defined by three men: Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings. If they said an event was big, it became big. If they ignored it, it hardly mattered....